Groundbreaking Victory in Oklahoma: Medication Abortion Protected

05.14.12 - Today,
a court delivered another stinging rebuke to the Oklahoma legislature, striking
down the government’s latest attempt to choke off women’s access to
reproductive health services—an arbitrary and severe restriction on medication
abortion.

Judge
Donald Worthington ruled that the law was “so completely at odds” with standard
medical practice that it “can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from
obtaining abortions and to punish and discriminate against those women who do.”

And
in no uncertain terms, the judge recognized that the Oklahoma Constitution
protects a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion. This is a first for
Oklahoma. And it sends a strong warning to a state that has served as a
laboratory for extreme abortion restrictions over the years.

The
Center challenged the law, which would have banned the use of medication to
treat women with ectopic pregnancy as well as restricting treatment options for
women seeking abortion last fall, arguing that it was a clear attack on women’s
health and basic rights.

Medication
abortion is a simple, safe and
highly effective procedure that allows a woman to choose to end a pregnancy in
a private, noninvasive way in consultation with her doctor. Scientific evidence supports a regimen that involves two steps. When a woman in the first
nine weeks of pregnancy goes to a reproductive health facility, she takes one
tablet of a drug called mifepristone. This blocks a hormone called
progesterone, which is responsible for sustaining a pregnancy.

Sometimes
a woman’s uterus empties without any further action, but more often women take
a drug called misoprostol several hours after the mifepristone to trigger that
process.

In
the best of situations, this happens when a woman is comfortable, in the
privacy of her home, and being supported by a friend or loved one.

The
law would have prevented
doctors from using their best medical judgment to treat women seeking pregnancy
terminations—ultimately, depriving women of the full range of scientifically
proven treatments available.

Today’s
victory in Oklahoma is the third in three months. Last month, the Center defeated
the state’s attempt to push a so-called “personhood” ballot initiative that
would have given fertilized eggs the full rights of a person. And in March, we
won a huge case that overturned an Oklahoma law requiring women seeking
abortion to undergo an ultrasound, see the image, and suffer through a state-authored
script read by the doctor.

It is
tremendous that the court has similarly rejected this extreme and misguided
attempt to dramatically restrict the care available to women seeking treatment
for ectopic pregnancy and women seeking abortions in Oklahoma. The medical
advances that made medication abortion widely available have made a huge
difference for more than one million American women. We fight these laws
because all women deserve a reproductive health service that is compassionate,
private, and makes total sense.